Grrl Power #698 – The digital closet

So when I thought of Cora, like, I don’t know, 20 years ago, she had cybernetic limbs. She had them up until a few months before I put her in the comic, when I came up with the idea to replace her cybernetics with the hard light stuff. It seemed cool and more futuristic (and this after I just bagged on myself for not being much of a futurist.)

My original thought about the hard light replacements for the cybernetics (at least the external stuff like her limbs. She still has an onboard computer and… whatever, wifi and smartgun targeting etc.) But the hard light was just supposed to be just a replacement for her limbs. Then I had those refrigerator moments where I started thinking that if she had the hard light projector, what else would she be doing with it. That’s when I came up with her replacing her clothes with it, and it doubles as armor since the hard light is, in fact, quite hard.

The unintended result of her intelligently applying her tech is that she, like Dabbler, can essentially shapeshift. It was never a power set I imagined for her, but it makes too much sense for her to have it as a “power stunt” as it were.

Maxima is a direct result of the Champions system… or Hero system or whatever it was called. At least the first edition rules. I found a bit of a loophole I exploited to make a multi-body form that maxed out a strength body, a speed body, etc. I think it was intended for characters like The Hulk, but I made it so all of the character’s forms looked the same, so no one could tell which mode he was in. There was also another exploit involving endurance and focus object disadvantages or something like that. Basically you could make your powered armor cheaper by powering it with batteries that could be targeted or stolen by villains, but you could make them non-obvious for a slightly lower bonus. Combining those things allowed me to make five 200 point characters (all the same person) for our 250 point game. He was grossly OP.

Not sure I ever played with that character, but the idea evolved into a golden Silver Surfer looking character I had (only without the surfboard obviously) called Ultima, who then evolved into Maxima.

I used to have these separate characters as the “stars” or background influence of different stories. A sorceress for adventure stories and fanfic, space pirate for fanfic and sci, a demon queen for horror erotica, an eldritch abomination for horror series, a vampire queen for vampire…stuff; and a goddess.

I wrote them so similar to each other however, despite distinct moral and ethical differences, I ended up for simplicity’s sake rolling them into one and made it a feature of her powers to have avatars with different personalities.

come a long way from *What if I mixed Lina Inverse and Naga the White Serpent together as one character*

It was “Champions” when it first game out. It was changed to “Hero System” later, sometime after GURPS came out.

The way Maxima is portrayed in the comic (with the little strength/speed/armor/Raybeam dials in her imagination) it might be more efficient to make it a variable power pool with 4 “Slots” that share the same point pool that add to her basic power levels in each area.

It’s a very weak attack (1d6) that goes off 1024 times in a single action, affects everyone in an area larger than the planet except for the user, and it’s No Normal Defense, meaning it does damage to everyone who isn’t immortal regardless of how strong their normal defenses are. I don’t have my books with me, but I think it ends up costing something like 50 points.

Sounds like one of the examples they gave for abusive builds GMs should disallow because they just aren’t fun to play for very long.

And you don’t need personal immunity just give the character immortality life support so the NND won’t affect him. You can get it even cheaper if you reduce it to 1/2 die damage and/or add “no range” (so it’s always centered on the character)

Other examples were: Novaman (He can make the sun explode. Once.) The Landlord (He has a base the size of the whole planet, and as many followers as the entire population of the world.)

“But not in trying to figure out if a person is above the age of 18!” At least that is the programmer variant of the saying.

Even if somehow one of the core balancing rules of Autofire does not apply (need to make the roll by enough to actually land more then 1 hit), it would still require 5 End times 1024 Shoots of endurance to fire.

I have played Champions in both tabletop and MMO versions, as well as City of Heroes, and I only partly agree with this. Tabletop Champions was mind-meltingly complex. One of the most terrible RPG experiences I’ve been through was a Champions session with a GM who immediately dropped us into into an arena vs. a villain who had been minmaxed with all-sense invisibility and energy blasts that could be launched from places the villain wasn’t. The Champions MMO isn’t top grade, but it had an advantage over City of Heroes in that it had a faster playstyle, with more of a sense of action to the battles. City of Heroes had great story depth, but fighting was slow, it felt very much like ‘hit attack button, wait for cooldown, hit button again…’. I still miss it though.

I played Champions mostly with other technicians within the electronics field, so to us the math wasn’t all that much compared to what we used at work.

Dealing with bad game mastering goes with any role pkaying game, as does min/maxing.

I have never liked the campaign style (in any RPG not just Champions) where the villains ere dumped in the players lap. When I GM’d I bought real life detective stories and planted clues (or clews if it was pulp) which the players had to decipher to save the city, save their NPCs, save their businesses and preserve their posessiins.

To me, the non-combat powers and unique skills are as fascinating as the combat abilities.

The problem with any system that gives you unrestricted power is just that, you can do Anything. The only thing stopping you is your Common Sense. Champions, as well as Mutants & Masterminds (a more recent superhero rpg) are both extremely powerful and you can create builds that just aren’t fun.

It sounds like Enigma Gears just had one of those GMs who either let the power go to his head (can happen with any system) or believed it was a GM Vs the Players which is NOT the best way to play a tabletop rpg.

Remember: City of Heroes, DC Universe Online and Champions Online aren’t just Superhero MMOs. They share a Developer. Jack Emmert AKA Statesman I AKA Jackalope was the Lead Developer for CoH, the Chief Creative Officer at Cryptic (the company that made Champions Online) before Perfect World Entertainment took over, AND is currently CEO of Daybreak Game Studio’s Austin studio, which is the physical location that produces DCUO.

The only thing I remember for certain is most CoH players threw him under the bus as he kept trying to make the Power Enhancement more complex and nerf the effectiveness of existing mods.

Also, I’d need a Sydney-caliber swear or 25 to describe how I feel about NCSoft specifically killing City of Heroes. They didn’t even let the final patch go live. They just killed it with 1 month notice… and then they rammed Statesman(the character) into an ARTS/MOBA.

Yeah, NCSOFT lost my business forever with that move. They could have just sold the game and let it continue under a new devloper, but instead they decided to stab the entire playerbase, their own customers, in the back.

:::cries::: I miss that game so much. My first MMO. First char I made was a Eng/Eng blaster. I walked up to a bad guy, and punched him 30 feet. I had to log out because I didn’t stop laughing for about 3 minutes.

The first time I ever saw the term power stunt was on this comic, which was mentioned I think like early on…or in the comments. Can’t remember off the top of my head. Which I am surprised; I mean I’ve never had a good PC so MMOs were never a thing I could get into; but even online I only ever came across terms like “power feats” or “tricks”.

THANK YOU for that second panel! Everyone wants to say “hard light”, as if photons could stop matter even if they were compressed and somehow made to stand still while still being in any sense photons. Since I was a kid I’ve been saying “They’re just glowing force fields!” (not that I have any clue how *force fields* would work, but it sounds 1000% less dumb than “hard light” to me, hehe).

Oooh!, looks like you would REALLY hate the “Arcot, Morey and Wade” stories by John W Campbell Jr. if you don’t like “hard light”… he has characters in an early book (the Venusians) that can compress light into a LIQUID and use it as bombs (think water-balloons) in their military bombers, then in another book they meet up with aliens that can go even further with light, and compress light into SOLID materials called Lux and Relux,.. Lux the “best” transparent material / conductor ever, and Relux the best reflector/insulator ever…

Good, light-hearted reading IF you can get over the very inaccurate science used, and the whole “We are Humans so WE are Best At Everything” mindset the author is in (among others being… oh, shall we politely say “non-pc attitudes” from when the books were written.)

The term is grandfathered in now, doesn’t matter if its an electromagnetic field contained plasma field with prismatic spread controlled arrays; or a bio-nanite swarm network using laser relays along side techno-organic luminescence and light refraction bending to produce to desired colors and textures; or dozens of others.

We are going to call it “Hard Light”

just as gamma ray weapon, x-ray weapon, micro-wave weapon, or even a Necro-force bolt weapon can all be called “Death Rays”

personally i don’t think she would be able to see thru them unless they are already transparent… at least not at this stage of her skill-tree leveling… remember when Peggy asked her about seeing thru disguises when they first met? i think a hologram (as i currently understand them to be, that is) would fall under the category of the newspaper that Peggy crumpled up and made a mask of… especially if the hologram in question is a Hard-Light one… the ones Sydney has for her wings though, i’m thinking she’d probably still see them, but they might be highlighted in some way to note that they are artificial rather than natural like the Alari wings seem to be, since i don’t think the Epimorph would have regenerated artificial ones when Sciona used it.

She managed to see through Dabbles disguise (that both Dabbles and SmugD claimed should not have been possible) and X’s disguise that not even Dabbles could penetrate (and she has been trying for weeks :P )

The only thing Sydney can ‘see tru’ is physical disguises, like a latex mask or simply a fake beard ( or a scrunched up piece of newspaper)

Dabbler listed some various alien hologram disguises, which we assume also influence texture (or lizard guy would be pretty noticeable the moment someone touched him), that the “veil” can’t be expected to 100% cover given they’d have to put every alien race that visited into the veil’s code.

So it seems the orb can see through at least commercial alien hologram disguises.

Naw, that’d be if it was Maxima having that reaction. With Sydney to get that reaction, it’ll be something super-geeky. So a superhero costume. Or maybe Cora mimicked her and they’re going to walk around looking like twins. (Or maybe she’s going to walk around looking like a Sydney twin in a super hero costume?)

Or maybe Cora did something that isn’t a reference, but just looks legitimately cool in its own right, like all kinds of neon, glowing, and rainbows tastefully done.

I desperately hope that alien civilizations don’t have such things, whether current or in their history.
Yorp you should get a hold of me on discord already.
I won’t discuss what I’m mentioning in detail here.

Sure. I have barely ever used it though, as it has been a long time since I last did online gaming. Plus have the complication that I do not have a working microphone at the moment. Which will have to wait until my finances are stable again.

Despite that I suggest you send me a message at https://www.deviantart.com/sydney-fan giving me your Discord contact details, in the format I need to type it in to add a friend (user name + number or whatnot), so that I can get you set up. Plus can text chat there (or in deviant art) until my mic issues are resolved.

Sorry about the delay in replying by the way. I now do shift work and have a 15 to 16 hour day (including commute) on shift days. So tend to do little more than veg out, when I get back. Especially if I have another shift the next day.

Likewise apologies in advance if any reply is slow, for the same reasons.

Why would she not just use advance genetic techniques to regrow the limbs? I would think if the Level of their technology have the ability to design hard light Mechanical replacements that a genetic replacement would be relatively simple.
Unless not having the limbs from a younger age results in there being no area in the brain to interface to them. As you get order the brain plasticity Gradually Goes away. For example: If you were blind from a young age because of damage to the eye or optic nerves , then the brain never got any signals from the eyes So even if everything was repaired and the person had perfect eyes they would never be able to see. The brain just would have never develop the appropriate wiring for vision.
But then again that could possibly be remedied with some sort of advanced brain stem cell type augmentation / programming. There could be a cost as in a risk of a possible change in her personality as the brain was adjusted to accept the Re-grown limbs.

The other alternative would be a full body clone of her existing body and then a brain transplant, but then you would still have the same issue of an adult brain that had never interface to The Missing limbs. Plus she would wind up being beside her self.

Or the reason that she ops for the current configuration could be as simple as just a personal preference. Cora just prefers the mechanical advantage as she gets from the lower technology “Hard light“/ mechanical Limbs.

As someone already pointed out in one of the other pages: a flaw in that idea is if the reason she was born without limbs was due to a genetic defect, any attempt to grow replacement limbs would result in growing the defect as well

You have a point but, even with our technology they’re working on correcting genetic defects. In fact there’s already been some partially successful experiments where they use a modified virus as vector to infect the defective cells with a genetic correction. It’s not been entirely successful yet but given the level of technology that is postulated within the framework of this comic I would imagine that such advanced technology of genetic defect correction would be fully developed.
Reference: https://newatlas.com/search/?q=+Correcting+genetic+defects+&sa=Search

Genetic rehabilitation and regeneration of limbs is probably going to be extremely expensive and time consuming. Doing surgery to place implants that let the body run artificial limbs that can be easily replaced? Much cheaper and much faster in comparison.

Because she is in contact with Dabbler, who requested that she locate Sydney.
Max is the immediate superior of both Dabbler and Sydney and the probability that the basic structure of Arc would be part of engaging Cora to retrieve Halo is high.

Point being, Dabbles hasn’t been there long enough for Cora to be intimately familiar to make a loadout to look like anyone at Archon, let alone Maxi
Butt long enough that Dabbles and Cora probably haven’t had physical contact, probably even only brief non-visual contact (including the call to retrieve Sydney)
Remember: Cora said that Dabbles hasn’t seen her upgrade to Hardlight

Whatever she has chosen is glowing gold. Look at the last panel, you see it reflected off Sydney’s forehead.
And Dabbler’s tendency not to really think before speaking at times, there is the chance she described Max to Cora as “the really powerful human super who is really worried about Sydney and is getting cranky about not knowing how she is” and showing her the newsreel of the test where Sydney, Max and several other ARCSWAT members demonstrate their powers on the tank to show her what Sydney looks like.

Dabbles might be prone to babbling, butt doubt she would have been in contact via Interstellar Telecom long enough to babble let along play a video, at most, she wold have just sent a package containing details about Sydney (mostly just what she looks like, and a brief overview about what she can do with her balls)

That first outfit reminds me of Scorpina from Mighty Morphing Power Rangers :D And I’m wondering what powers her Hard Light System? Assuming she doesn’t also have a skeletal frame underneath, you would need a lot more power to give enough strength to stand, let alone walk or run. Does she have like a pocket Zero Point Module or something equivalent? Or maybe a way to charge the power cell via kinetic impacts? So walking or other physical impacts (like being punched or shot) would transfer some if not all of the energy…

That first outfit is what… nevermind, not going to repeat what already was posted and ignored, just like this post will be ignored with a similar post being made by a poster who believes panel four to look like

As Hard Light is involved I assume this isn’t just a chromomorphic change but involves textures as well?

In some ways this puts her above Dabbler in the shape change department, even Dabbler’s best “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” class glamour still falls under “glamour” an illusion, granted it might be able to trick one mind into thinking they are touching cloth *thanks to other Succubus mind trickery when the chosen “prey” is alone*. As well as more options limited by range, imagination, and preferences of the target; But a general infiltration, having the appearance and touch is the better option.
-no “did my hand just pass through her mini-skirt when I walked by* type problems.

You know, the ‘hard light’ limbs sound awesome, but I can’t help but feel there would be a number of disadvantages to physical limbs to consider.

Such as having higher energy requirements and being more vulnerable to energy disruptions. The former is the more pressing on a consistent basis, but the latter isn’t anything to sneeze at. Anything that disrupts the energy field would cause the limbs to vanish whereas physical limbs could potentially possess shielding against things like EMP that would normally cause them to shut down.

Good point! That’s what I thought when I first saw those windows on Star Trek that weren’t glass but just a force field. What idiot designed that? Considering how often Trek ships malfunction, it’s a miracle Starfleet can still get people to fly around in those death traps!

Hopefully she has some mechanism for messing with mass/inertia etc built in because otherwise that could get weird. Knowing her and Dabbler, she’s probably got a program micromanaging it for optimal BAMFORD.

In before her new look is easier to draw, right? Don’t overdo details you have to repeat!

Sydney would have been able to figure that out on her own. She’s done plenty of experimenting with the orbs even before joining Archon; the only reason she couldn’t identify the green orb’s power is because she never thought to try it underwater (ironic since that’s where she found the orbs in the first place.)

Keeping mechanical looking arms even when not necessary reminds me of Stephen Hawking. Apparently he was offered a more natural sounding voice box, but was so accustomed to the one he had that he regarded it as his voice.

in adition to the above points, it was made by Dennis Klatt, a friend of his who was dying of cancer as he developed and recorded the clips used. It’s not just being accustomed to it. Every time he used it, he hears a dead friend’s voice one more time.

For those who have forgotten Pg.48:
[https://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/268]
… this is MY “Dark Horse”-type nomination for Monday’s reveal of Cora’s next loadout!
( … I didn’t want the above URL to be click-able, to reduce the odds of people “spoiling” their Monday surprise … )

I am wondering why Crona stops at two arms when copying the Dabbler look? Wouldn’t she technically be able to copy all 4 arms?
Coordinating them might be a problem but she might get used to it with training.
I doubt it would be a hardware problem though, as whatever onboard computer she is using should be able to handle the display of the extra hands.

Any creation of the projector must be controlled by the user’s brain to be functional. Any additional arms would probably not move since there is no brain area set up to send them signals. It would be like giving a human a monkey tail and expecting them to hang from it. And to be really picky, someone born without limbs would most likely have atrophied areas of the brain that controlled motor functions. For example, people born with cataracts can get them removed. But unless it is done very early, the brain won’t develop the ability to use eyes. (for humans anyway)

And in a side note, I was trying to come up with a hero name for someone with Cora’s condition and technology. If the Venture Brothers hadn’t taken it I would have named her ‘Phantom Limb’.

She has had this limb set since she was an infant, so why would she be atrophied?

You’re talking about incomplete development in the first place, which is a different word but I don’t remember it at the moment. But if she was given the proper hookup, she’d have developed the necessary neural nets as a child. Also? Why do you assume that the kind of alien that Cora is one of, has the same neural development scheme that humans have? We’re REALLY wasteful in that regard.

On a lighter side: How about ‘Mughi’ from Dirty Pair? who says she has to be human looking? It also fits with here comment, “So really I’m not wearing anything at all” from herehttps://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/3035

Hey just noticed a glitch in the matrix, er, a continuity problem. Young!Dabbler’s differently colored eyes. Older!Dabbler has different eye colors because she replaced one with a cyber-eye, right? Why does Young!Dabbler have a cyber-eye?

I don’t believe that it has ever been established how old Dabbler was when she lost her original eye. She only said that she got it because she wasn’t as good a swordswoman as she thought. It could easily have been a high school mishap in Kendo Club.

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